Hello Protocol for Dead Girls Read online

  It’s trippy. But kind of cool, in a way.

  One of them flies right at me, coming from nowhere, and I don’t have time to get out of the way. Instead, instinctively, I reach for it. Stupid. For all I know, this junk will corrupt me.

  But it’s already in my hand and it isn’t glowing anymore. I carefully release my fist and peer between my fingers.

  It’s a data packet. A small chunk of code. When it arrives at its destination, it will join up with its pals to form whatever it’s meant to be. An email or a file or whatever.

  I look at where the packets are coming from, then track their paths across the space. Wherever they’re going is where I want to go. They’ll be headed deeper, to the TCP network layer.

  Does that align with what I had planned based on the network layout?

  Seems like it.

  I hold my hand up, palm open, and nudge the inert packet with my finger.

  It leaps out of my hand and flies in the same direction as the rest of them, as if being drawn by a super magnet. It makes a muffled whoompf sound as it goes, like when you put a cylinder into one of those parcel-delivery vacuum tubes.

  “All right, packet,” I say. For some reason, it’s comforting to speak. It reminds me that I’m human in this very inhuman place. “I’ll follow you.”

  I start off in that direction, wondering what the next place will be like. I haven’t the faintest inkling of what I might experience. I kind of hope that I end up in a spot that’s all white with shiny surfaces and reverberating with a sound that’s like angels are singing in chorus. Just because it would be kind of cool. Like in a movie.

  Oddly, instead of just morphing into a new environment, I see that the packets are zooming into a round opening at shoulder height.

  I look at my entirely digital body, then at the opening. Even if the two things were physical, I’d be able to fit.

  All right. Let’s give it a whack.

  I reach up, planning to do a leap that will get my upper body onto the ledge, then scramble to get the rest of myself in.

  A dark shape appears, shoving me away.

  I stumble back, surprised. Am I getting smacked down by some sort of virus protection?

  If that’s the case, this system’s virus protection looks like a young woman around my age, wearing her hair in a long ponytail down her back.

  She looks distinctly unhappy. “You can’t go there.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because you’ll die.”

  5

  But We’re Already Dead

  Again, I find myself in the position of having to decide whether I should inform someone that they’ve died or keep that information to myself.

  While Ashta had been sweet and friendly, this girl seems angry. The snap in her eyes and tightness of her mouth suggest she’d just as soon have me dead, and I have to wonder why she bothered to warn me against something that could kill me.

  Since I’m already dead, my existence is beginning to mean something else to me. I’m not sure what yet. It isn’t life. What does it mean to exist without being alive?

  “Are you stupid?” The girl spits the words at me.

  “I guess that’s a matter of opinion,” I say carefully. “What’s in there?”

  I indicate the opening with a glance.

  “Why should I tell you?” she demands.

  “I don’t know. You bothered to tell me not to go in. That must count for something. And we aren’t exactly surrounded by a lot of people here. Our options for socializing are limited.”

  She frowns. “Have you seen any others?”

  “A young girl. Now you. That’s it.”

  “Are you new?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I’m trying to figure things out.”

  I take a chance on introducing myself to her. “I’m Jennika.”

  “Good for you.” She glares at me.

  Was she this unpleasant when she was alive? I hope not. As far as electronic ghosts go, she’s kind of a jerk.

  Elly would know how to handle this girl. There isn’t a person on Earth Elly can’t charm with her big smile and gentle personality.

  Elly always puts her focus on the other person. I’ll try that.

  “Have you had a hard time here?” I ask. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

  Her eyes narrow suspiciously. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why would you want to help me? Is this a trick?”

  “No,” I say slowly. “I mean, if I were trying to pull something, I’m sure I’d lie and say no anyway, so I’m sure you can’t believe me when I say no. But I don’t have anything to gain by tricking you.”

  She looks at me, her gaze full of naked distrust.

  I think kindness is the wrong way to go with her.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” I continue. “If chucking you into that hole would help me out in some way, I’d do that, and I imagine you’d do the same to me. But you didn’t, so I’m guessing there’s nothing to be gained by it.”

  She’s still eyeing me like I’m a Labrador with its eyes on her burger, but her energy has calmed.

  Huh. Now that I think about it, it is her energy I’m reacting to more than her expressions and body language. Before, she was generating a choppy, overclocked feeling, but that has eased.

  Am I learning to perceive things in here the way they really are, rather than subconsciously translating it into something more human?

  I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a scary thing.

  “We don’t have to work together,” I tell her when she doesn’t respond. “I can just keep moving through. I just thought that if we shared what we know, it might help us figure things out.”

  “You think so?” she asks.

  “I think it can’t hurt. And I also think this place has some bizarre characteristics. Don’t you? The little girl didn’t know anything was wrong, but you have to know that all this isn’t right.”

  “Are you real?” she asks me.

  “I don’t know how to answer that,” I say. “What’s real? I’m a university student, I can tell you that. With a real name. Jennika. Like I told you. I have a best friend named Elly, and my cousin Bryce is just like another best friend. I love tacos and hate green peppers. What else do you want to know?”

  For the first time, she looks uncertain of herself. “I don’t know. Like you said, if you’re just a figment of my imagination, you’ll just say whatever I might believe.”

  “You think you’re imagining me?” I ask.

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense. I’m dreaming or in a coma or something. Stuck inside my mind.”

  I’m intrigued, wondering how she came to this conclusion. She has a grasp on reality that Ashta doesn’t have, but she doesn’t know what I know about memory upload. “What about an afterlife? I considered that possibility for about half a second.”

  For the first time, her frown eases. She looks faintly amused, though she doesn’t smile. “I don’t believe in that stuff. And if an afterlife existed, it would either be a whole lot better or a whole lot worse than this. It wouldn’t be so…so much nothing.”

  “I like your reasoning,” I say.

  Her expression tightens up again.

  I meant what I said, but she probably thinks I’m just trying to flatter her. “I don’t know how to convince you that I’m real, and that I’m not a jerk. I guess I’d have to do something you wouldn’t imagine I’d do, but since I don’t know you, I have no idea what that would be. It puts me in a tight spot, you know?”

  She doesn’t respond. She just keeps watching me with the expression of someone watching a bug walk across the floor. Like she doesn’t know if she wants to squash me or not.

  I sigh. “Well, it’s not like we have to be friends. Good luck to you.”

  I turn back to the opening that originally caught my interest. The one that should lead me closer to the place where I can find out where I need to
go to contact the outside.

  “Don’t,” she says, her voice loud and full of tension.

  I turn back to her. “Why? This is where I need to go.”

  “Someone else went that way, and then I heard screaming, and she never came back.” She speaks with great reluctance, looking down at her feet. It’s the first sign of vulnerability I’ve seen from her.

  “Screaming?” I repeat, looking at the opening.

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe it was good screaming?” I suggest hopefully. “Like, yay, I came through this hole and everything in here is just so super great.”

  Her gaze snaps up to me. “It most definitely was not a happy sound.”

  “Hmm.” I don’t love the possibilities, but given what I know, there’s no reason for me to find something over there that will make me scream. “It wasn’t a little girl, was it?”

  Whatever this girl witnessed, I hope it didn’t happen to Ashta.

  “No. You met a little girl here?”

  “Yeah. I’m not sure if she’s still here, though.”

  She asks, “Where would she go?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. It’s true. I don’t know. I only suspect the possibility of deletion. “What did you know about the girl who went through?”

  She blinks as if the question required her to change the direction of her thoughts. “Not much. Short, curly hair. Some kind of accent. She was a little weird.”

  “Weird how?” I press.

  “I don’t know. Kind of twitchy. Nervous, I guess.”

  “Well, that could make sense. This isn’t a normal situation,” I point out.

  “That’s all I know. She came through here, went in there, and that was the last I saw of her.”

  “Have you seen anyone else?”

  She shakes her head. “No. Just her, then you.”

  I wish I knew how long she’s been here in comparison to how long I’ve been here. There are at least four of us in here. Or there were.

  “How old was she?” I ask.

  “I don’t know, sixteen or seventeen, maybe. Younger than us.”

  “How old are you?”

  She frowns, and seems like she won’t answer, but then she says, “Twenty.”

  “Same here,” I say, distracted, reviewing what little I know. Four girls, ranging from Ashta’s age to twenty. It’s not a large enough sample size to draw any significant conclusions.

  “You’re going through there no matter what I say, aren’t you?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  She runs her hands down the front of her shirt. “Fine. Then I’ll go first.”

  “Hang on. What?”

  She steps closer, fixing me with that steely self-assurance that seems to be her trademark. “I don’t want to be left standing here alone while I don’t know what happens. So if something terrible happens, it will happen to me and you’ll have to listen to it.”

  I return her gaze. “That’s a very unexpected conclusion.”

  “I’m a very unexpected kind of person.” She pushes past me and reaches up to the opening. “Are you going to follow me?”

  “Yep.”

  “Even if I start screaming?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay then.” She bends her knees, then jumps, pulling herself with her arms as she does, landing her stomach on the ledge of the opening.

  I hear her voice. “Make yourself useful. Grab my feet and push, will you?”

  “Sure.” I move around to grasp her ankles and push her forward. She must be using her arms because she slides away, into the opening, then falls out of view.

  I’m listening. Cringing.

  I don’t hear any screaming. That’s good.

  I hope that’s good.

  I just stand there, listening, for a span of time that starts to stretch out too long.

  All right. My turn. I reach up and simultaneously jump and pull myself up into the ledge. The next bit is awkward, since there’s no one to push me through. I wish I could have gotten up here and climbed in feet-first, but this virtual environment is entirely without ladders or stepstools.

  The idea amuses me, even as I awkwardly rock my hips side to side and drag myself on my belly with my hands.

  Abruptly, the ledge falls away and I drop straight down. I curl up, waiting for a horrible, hard landing.

  It doesn’t come. I open my eyes and realize I’m not moving. I’m already lying on something. Also, the light has gotten a lot brighter. It’s a bright, artificial white. Cautiously, I unfurl myself and raise up on my left elbow.

  “What took you so long?” The girl whose name I still don’t know steps around me, looking curious and only somewhat annoyed. “I’ve been waiting for you forever.”

  I wish either of us had some objective measure of time. As far as I can tell, it’s only been a minute since she came through the opening. But maybe I went into sleep mode and I didn’t know it. Or maybe she did. Or maybe we just perceive time differently.

  “Got here as fast as I could.” I stand up. “What have you found?”

  “I wish I knew.” She turns her head to her right and upward, and I follow her gaze.

  If where we are qualifies as a room, then the ceiling is covered with a rushing highway of…I don’t know what.

  It’s light and energy streaking by like a digital fireworks show.

  “What is it?” she asks softly.

  “Reality,” I say.

  “What is reality?” She looks at me. “What does it mean that we’re here?”

  My heart breaks to tell her the truth, but something about her tells me that pretty lies are the wrong way to go. Whatever life she’s led, it’s been about hard truths and realities, and she needs to know what’s really happening.

  “Something happened to us,” I say. “We died. These aren’t our real bodies. Our memories have been uploaded into a police mainframe, and somehow, our consciousnesses came with it. The police don’t know we’re here.”

  Her forehead creases, and I know that she doesn’t doubt what I’m saying.

  “Do you remember anything?” she asks. “About how you died.”

  “No,” I say. “Do you?”

  “No.” She meets my gaze, and for the first time, I feel like we could be something like friends. Maybe not friends exactly, but maybe we could work together to figure things out.

  “How do you know?” Her voice sounds toneless and hollow. Resigned. Almost like she expected something like this, but finding out for sure has nonetheless broken her spirit.

  “I’m a programmer,” I say. “At least, I was studying to be one. I didn’t have a job at it or anything. But I found a layout for this system’s specifications, and I’m looking for a way to let them know we’re here. That we’re aware, I mean. We’re not supposed to be, but we are.”

  “Memory upload?” she asks faintly. “Like…the thing they’ve been talking about on tv. Which means someone killed us?”

  “Probably,” I say gently. “We’re not really here. Not the way we feel like we are, with bodies and everything. We’re just perceiving it that way to normalize the data we’re receiving.”

  “How?” she asks, still sounding vacant. “How does that make sense?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit. “I wish I had all the answers, but I’m still looking, like you are. Trying to find an answer.”

  “If we’re dead,” she says slowly, her gaze meeting mine, “then what do answers matter?”

  “Don’t you want to know what happened to you?” I asked. “To tell someone that you’re still here, or at least tell them goodbye?”

  Her gaze drifts off somewhere behind my left shoulder. Slowly, her head moves from side to side. “No. I can guess what happened, more or less. I don’t need the details. And there’s no one who would care.”

  She looks so lost, like becoming aware of her death has instantly morphed her into a ghost of her former, forceful self.

  “I’m Jennika,” I say, because I wan
t to call her by her name to let her know that I see her and acknowledge her existence. But I don’t know her name. “Who are you?”

  “No one,” she whispers. “I’m no one. I never was.”

  There’s something so naked and haunted and lost about her that tells me that she led a life completely opposite of mine. I was loved and protected. I sense she never had anyone. Yet here we are, both together in this same place.

  Taking a risk, I reach out my hand to her. “We’re both no one now, together. Maybe you didn’t have anyone who would be there for you in life, but it’s just you and me in here right now, and I’ll be here for you, for whatever our existence brings.”

  She doesn’t move, and I take that as encouragement that the promise of my touch hasn’t repulsed her. I’ve never felt so uncertain of myself, but I reach out and grasp her hand.

  “I’m Jennika,” I say again. “Your new sister, and I promise, I won’t leave you as long as I have any say about it.”

  Her eyes are wide and I don’t know if they’re full of fear or hope or what, but her grip on my hand tightens slightly.

  Her other arm comes forward and I flinch from the blow she’s about to deliver. But then it doesn’t happen that way. Instead, her hand finds my shoulder, then her arm wraps around me and I find myself inside the hug of a girl I don’t know but who has become the only person in my life.

  No, not my life. I’m already dead. She’s the only person in my existence.

  We cling to each other, and my neck is wet with her tears. Whether they’re tears of grief for her lost life or tears of relief for having someone, I don’t know, but I feel like I’m crying, too, because I no longer feel so alone and right now, that’s everything to me.

  “Daiya,” she whispers.

  “What?”

  “My name’s Daiya.”

  Almost immediately, Daiya straightens, smears her hands over her cheeks, and puts on her game face.

  At least, I assume that’s her game face. It’s equal parts grim determination and suicidal hostility with just a sprinkling of nervousness.